#BalletHistory during 1706 05 May

Hello my darlings! It's your favourite ballerina blogger, Emma, and welcome to another exhilarating trip through time! Today, we're taking a trip back to the 1700s, specifically the 5th of May, 1706. Oh my, can you imagine being in London during this time period? The Georgian era, with all its elegant gowns, grand ballrooms, and a burgeoning love for music and the arts!

You betcha I’m excited about this one! Buckle up because we are going to be exploring some of the coolest fashion trends in history. As always, Magic Meg and I are rocking a delightful shade of pink and I've already got my sparkly pink tutu all prepped!

As usual, I'll be filling my leather rucksack with historical tidbits and fun facts. Plus, we're going to uncover the enchanting world of ballet as it was unfolding in the 1700s!

Speaking of enchanting… let's talk about my faithful steed, Magic Meg! My shire horse, with her golden hooves and magnificent white mane and tail, she looks absolutely stunning in her pink satin ribbons!

Okay, enough of my babbling (though, it’s truly hard to stop when I get excited, ha!) It’s time for a little journey through the mists of time! Here we go…

We arrived in London to the bustle of city life. A mix of cobbled streets and grand buildings with a feeling of constant movement and life! Oh how exciting to experience it all!

The first thing we found were gorgeous, elaborate costumes being designed and created for the London stage. It was exciting to see the evolution of performance clothing! In 1706, theatre and dance were evolving into art forms like we know them today! It felt so different to be right here at the time. And let's just say… those early forms of ballet, oh, how they would have fascinated me if I had lived in this time!

Of course, I got to try on some of those fabulously crafted costumes for a quick photoshoot and Magic Meg had fun strutting her stuff as well, even though we only managed to get a few blurry photographs - she’s such a curious horse! She couldn't help but nibble a few fancy fabric samples in that wonderful 18th century shop.

Let’s get real! You might be wondering “but Emma, where is the ballet?”. The “modern” style of ballet as we know it hadn’t fully emerged, not yet! The late 1700s saw the rise of some influential ballet pioneers. Imagine, the seeds of our favorite artform were starting to germinate!

So, instead of traditional ballets we saw things like courtly dances like the Minuet and the Contredanse. Oh how those beautiful movements captivated us both. Think of swirling silk dresses, gentle swaying movements, and light, almost musical footsteps. That was the style. They were graceful!

The dancers in that time used some early ballet terms and techniques. I even saw a few basic movements reminiscent of pliés, port de bras and a form of arabesque. There’s a whole world to be explored here! Imagine, we are tracing the roots of our art form all the way back here!

It’s just fascinating!

As a fellow ballerina, I bet you’re fascinated to learn about these early roots too. Maybe we should add more information on 1700s ballet techniques to our ballet class routine. Hmm…. A “history dance routine” sounds interesting!

We were lucky to experience all of this first hand! There was a big fashion boom and everything seemed to be about extravagant clothes. Even those 1706 ballerinas! Oh how their clothes flowed and danced in the early stage performances!

They also wore their shoes with lots of fancy ornamentation, bows and buckles which reminded me of all my own sparkly ballet slippers back home!

So my friends, that's all the time we have for today. But one thing’s for sure, the seeds of ballets as we know them were just being planted in this era! That just goes to show that history is alive in our art.

Stay tuned for next month’s post and get ready to hop on Magic Meg for more exhilarating ballet journeys! Don’t forget, you can check out our blog on www.pink-tutu.com! And don't forget - Pink tutus for everyone!